Heavenly Hospitality, there baaaaack.

[brunoflipper]

in the past 12 months- i've paid 250 in denver... 330 (rack rate at the peabody last month) and 200 in memphis... 200 and 225 in kc... and 420 in boston...  

not to mention $430 in cancun (non AI), palm springs for $350 and yes true story, $380 a night in vegas...

but then again, i don't like dumps... and boston and cancun were for jr. suites with copley/ocean view...

[USRufnex]

This has been quite a few years ago (pre-9/11, actually), but one of my day jobs in Chicago was working for a company that booked special rate hotel rooms for conventions across the country.

Most were big conventions that came through Chicago, but many were in Orlando, Minn/St Paul, Detroit, Las Vegas, Memphis, Philly, Palm Springs, the Javits Ctr in NYC, etc, etc, etc...

A predetermined list of rooms available were given to... let's say the American Library Assoc... to call by a certain date to get the discounts... I remember discounted rooms at the Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons or Hyatt Regency running around $239 a night at the convention rate.

These rooms filled really quickly for certain conventions... but the ALA had those discounted four-star rooms available all the way up until the convention started.  in that convention, the midpriced hotel rooms filled up very quickly, and the limited couple of smaller cheaper hotels like Travel Inn and Days Inn sold out of their specially priced rooms within days... guess those librarians don't have the big bucks?!?

Hopefully, enough is being done to renovate/modernize Tulsa's existing downtown convention center... few/none of these convention centers in other cities are attached or affiliated with a larger sports arena... (McCormick Place/Chicago, Javits Center/NYC, Hynes/Boston, etc).

Tulsa has a great selling point for the pricing on their nicer hotels... what's missing downtown seems to be some cheaper midpriced hotels... the more price points/options the better..... which makes you wonder how/why the city hasn't gotten more involved in the East End project, instead of letting it dwindle into a game of Monopoly between Global Development Partners and WalMart (will this become another game with the houses and hotels replaced by surface parking?)  

Hmmm, just waiting to find out who bought Marvin Gardens???...  [:O]

[perspicuity85]

I can't help but think that eventually Tulsa won't need to give out $10 million in tax incentives for a hotel next to the BOk Center.  Downtown is slowly but surely coming back to life.  When the BOk Center begins to host major events, there will be a far greater demand for hotel rooms downtown.  Won't potential profits eventually cause another hotel developer to build the hotel on their own dollar?  The Crowne Plaza is undergoing a $10 million renovation.  Why should the city give out $10 million to a hotel that probably won't be any nicer than the Crowne Plaza eventually will be?

[sgrizzle]

The city wants there to be some more development in progress or done when the arena opens. This won't be the only hotel coming.

Maybe we should agree to give them tax incentives if they buy city hall.